MOLECULAR LAB BUILT TO ENABLE ONSITE TESTING

Above: Led by Juliet Elvy (third from the left), Nelson’s MedLab South team established their own COVID-19 test lab.

In January 2020 Medlab South Clinical Microbiologist Juliet Elvy was aware of the strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 but did not foresee the unfolding of a global pandemic.

Before summer had ended, she and her team were at the frontline of the fight against the virus. Remarkably, they evolved from choreographing the courier delivery of thousands of samples sent to other laboratories for testing, to developing their own molecular lab at Nelson Hospital where they could conduct more than 100 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests each day.

Juliet says the lab science needed to detect a virus is very different from the usual bacteriology testing done in the small Nelson lab.

“In the Nelson microbiology laboratory, we culture bacteria, but COVID-19 is a virus and we can’t culture viruses in the same way as bacteria,” she says.

“For a COVID-19 virus test you need to amplify fragments of the viral nucleic acid by PCR. It uses completely different technology and expertise, which we didn’t have here.”

Sending samples away for testing during Alert Level 4 became increasingly difficult; flights were cancelled, or delayed, and tertiary labs were swamped with samples.

Then the opportunity arose for Juliet to establish a test laboratory, right here in Nelson.

Before summer had ended, she and her team were at the frontline of the fight against the virus.

“Luckily we were able to source a molecular platform quickly because it was already available in New Zealand, and we decided to go for it,” Juliet says.

Although none of her team were molecular scientists Juliet felt confident in their ability.

“Under normal circumstances it would take weeks to set this up but the urgency of the situation meant it all happened very quickly.”

The team undertook three days of intensive training and within a fortnight were able to test up to 150 samples (swabs) a day.

“I am very proud of the team, they stepped up and took the new technology on board, and their agility to react to the change was really impressive.”

NUMBERS AT A GLANCE

Between 18 March and 24 May 6,840 tests were conducted, across primary care, hospitals, aged residential care facilities, community-based assessment centres (CBACs) and mobile testing. 69 per cent of tests were taken at CBACs.

The MedLab South laboratory in Nelson processed 2,739 tests onsite (as at 18 June).